


The Other

by MovingPen



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MovingPen/pseuds/MovingPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos thinks about all the things Cecil is and is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other

               Sometimes it’s hard for him to believe that the man he loves is anything but Other. He isn’t really sure what that means, as if words have any intrinsic meaning to anyone other than the people who use them, but he feels it fits.

               He can’t think of any other way to describe the way his eyes look under the pale saucer of the desert moon. During the day, his lover’s eyes settle for a deep brown. He gets lost in them, sometimes, the same way he gets lost in science and equations and beakers and breakers. But at night, they are unlike that at all. They are, in fact, unlike anything he has ever seen. If he could manage to borrow a word from science and make it fit (which he can’t, not really, because borrowing words requires _far_ too much paperwork), he would call them fluorescent. Ultraviolet. In truth, they are neither of those things. They are simply _Other._

               It’s the only word that fits the way he talks. His voice isn’t deep or baritone or falsetto or anything else. It’s a feeling more than a sound, if a sound can be more than a sound, and it makes him feel calm. Safe out in the middle of the desert where everyone knew that stop signs were optional and sleep was a joke, where no one could hear you scream or shout—and if they did, they wouldn’t care. They might look outside and think, ‘hm, must be Tuesday again’, like time was a thing that worked. But twice a week, every week, when things seemed to be floating into the stratosphere and the world might as well be ending, his voice would carry through the whole town, and the earth found a way to hold itself together for just a little bit longer.

               Sometimes, he likes to think that he and the man he loves aren’t so different from one another. After all, they both have two hearts—the metaphorical kind—that beat together when they’re close. They both have two arms most days, and their shapes fit together like a jigsaw puzzle while they’re both pretending to sleep. They both have two eyes, two mouths between them, and countless words marking the path they took to get to exactly where they are, to whatever time and place they may exist in.

               Other times, he knows that could not be farther from the truth. He has fallen in love with the Other, and the Other, by definition, cannot be anything like anything else. They have two hearts, but sometimes he cannot find the other’s heartbeat. They both have two arms, but the other’s are far stronger than his own. Stronger than anyone else’s arms, he thinks. When they sleep, he does not pretend. He knows the other stays awake looking at the ceiling, out the window, eyes beautiful and bright. And while they both have a mouth, his own is boring. It says things, sometimes. Scientific things. The other says those things are brilliant, but doesn’t acknowledge the force of nature that are his own two lips and every sound that escapes them.  

               Sometimes he thinks he knows who he has fallen in love with. Maybe not someone so completely Other, but a force of nature instead. That’s already defined, he thinks. It makes it easy. He still isn’t sure which force of nature it is, but he tries to narrow it down every day. For example, he most certainly isn’t rain. He most certainly is not a lot of things, just like how he isn’t tall or short, not thin or fat, neither here nor there. Maybe he’s time, he thinks. Maybe I’ve fallen in love with something infinite and forever.

               But that thought scares him, because he knows he is neither of those things. He is just a scientist, and scientists aren’t forever. Science is not forever. The only thing that lasts are the names of the things that science finds and the people who find them, but he doesn’t know how time can love words. He hopes the other will never have to love anyone that isn’t him, because he knows they’re happy together, and how unhappy they are apart.

               He is scared of a lot of things. He is scared of the sky, since it stopped following the rules that skies should follow. He’s afraid of dogs, because dogs do not mean the same thing in Night Vale as they do everywhere else. He is afraid of books, as he’s never read a book, and the unknown is definitely a thing to fear. That is precisely why science is so brave. That is why he is a scientist. That is how he stays in Night Vale, he thinks. That is how he loves someone who exists as so much more than himself, someone so Other that they redefine his universe.

               In truth, he does not care what Cecil is or is not. The lists would be too long, they would change too often. He will never know everything about Cecil, just as one cannot know everything about the Other, and that is okay. He doesn’t need to know everything. All he needs to know is that he is loved.

And he knows he is. 

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short something I wanted to get out of my system. Wrote it in about 15 minutes. Thanks for reading! :)


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